


Feed

by brightephemera



Category: Planescape: Torment
Genre: Angst, Food, Gen, Insanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 19:26:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13596768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: The Nameless One failed. But he still can't die.





	Feed

The red-haired tiefling woman dresses as she likes, which turns some heads even in a city of this size. Minimal. Leather. It suits.

She walks with purpose and stops at a crook in a stone wall. The neighborhood around is aggressively neat; the dabus have built up and repaired the streets, statues, trees, windows, walls, arches, roofs, and towers of this neighborhood to a truly impressive degree these last few years.

Just one part is still a mess, that crooked corner where no corner should be; and there slouches a man. He is broad-shouldered, with long legs bent up and his head bowed over his knees. His skin is ruined with scars; they lace his muscular arms, crisscross his shoulders, seemingly form boots for his gnarled and wounded feet. His ornaments are a few locks of hair beaded with silver and copper outside a matted black mess, and a thin black bracelet with what appear to be organic burrs along it. He carries no faction signs, though Chaosmen might adopt him on appearance alone.

A hooded Collector swerves from the flow of traffic, pushing a splintery cart toward the man, ready to take the corpse. The tiefling lashes her tail. “Pike off! I found him first.” The Collector scurries away.

She turns now to the man. As she closes she can hear him mumbling in a gravelly bass, as usual. “Dead, dead, all dead, only dead, only and all the dead talk to me…”

She sets down first a wineskin, then a small tray on which she arranges a roll of bread, a hunk of hard cheese, and a few strips of meat. A meal fit for a king in the Hive.

“Oi,” she says, squatting before him. “I brought yeh some lunch.”

“Whisper, whisper, if they whisper you know, you know, they’re already gone…”

“Hey.” She reaches in and touches his greasy tangle of hair. “Do yeh know me?”

That gets a response. “Know, know, everybody here knows, all of them know me, they all remember what I did, what I do…do I remember you?” He raises his head ever so slightly and peers under his eyebrows at her. “No.” He does not see her face after he says that. He bows his head again and picks at one foot. Moments later he seems to notice the food for the first time. He sweeps up the roll and devours it in one messily extended bite. No sooner does he swallow than he starts mumbling again. “The walls are lies. Deeper walls are deeper lies. How can stone lie so? Why a lie, to lie in stone? Who should die to write the lie?”

The tiefling stands up, still watching. “Ach. It’d be kinder to let yeh starve.” She bites her lip and whispers. “And let yeh, and let yeh…”

She roots one hand in her own hair and watches for a moment longer. Her tail coils once or twice as if remembering an embrace. Then she snaps it root to tip and walks away, jaw set, chin high, as purposefully as before.


End file.
